Heroic Giant Love
by HVK
Summary: A collection for my future Canyinn Canyon/Finn one-shots! Currently featuring 'Recurrence'; Finn and Canyon have an outing in the wastelands, and Canyon is powerfully reminded that Finn is so much like lost Billy; and, in many ways, the situation between them is now reversed.
1. Chapter 1

Prompt from paletterider on Tumblr for a canyinn fic: 'Well, how about some strange giant people ritual for Finn to go through to court Canyon?' I wrote this on the spot!

Disclaimer: I don't own Adventure Time and make no profit from this work.

* * *

Finn whined, wiggling his way into the grass skirt and pushing the hat off him after spending a few minutes inside it. "I'm too small for most of this stuff."

"It's proper ritual and social function and the right way to do things," Canyon said, her face as stoic and calm as ever; if she was kidding or messing with him, it was totally unclear. "Seriously. It totally is."

Finn pouted. The edge of an enormous cloth cape, big enough on him to be a toga, started slipping off one round and pink shoulder. He hastily tugged it up as Canyon's impassive gaze became rather more… focused than normal, and he pouted harder because it made her smile.

Finn tried to remember if giants had rituals. His brow furrowed as he thought back to that one pink giant he ran across every so often (who was more of a bullying jerk than anything), Billy himself, and of course Canyon.

A random enemy, his hero that he knew little about the personal life of, and his new girlfriend. That wasn't much to go on about their culture, really.

"Are you _sure _I have to do this?" Finn said again, almost pleading. "I don't like this social rule stuff…!"

Canyon raised an eyebrow at that, thin and dark against her skin and her lips arching very slightly downward in the faintest of frowns. She leaned downwards, looming over Finn; he was abruptly very aware that he was barely half as tall as her leg, and a good deal skinnier. She was so _big, _and in the presence of women Finn's usual boundless bravado invariably deserted him; around a woman so large, it was even worse. He cowered, just a little, and her voice boomed quietly (somehow, he had no idea how Canyon could do that), "You serious or not about me?"

His voice was a whisper, a little faint cry. It was childish, weak, and he hated himself for it, but she somehow encouraged him just by looking. He said, weakly but with just a trace of frimness enough to surprise him at his own honestly, he said a tiny affirmative.

"Can't hear you too well…?"

A croak, small and quiet, boyish. A boy sound, yes.

"C'mon. Speak up."

"Y-yeah!"

And Canyon nodded; she was reserved, her emotions just as calm and slow as her expressions, and so the visible reactions meant the most, and her warm smile made him almost fall over with a violent blush.

And now Canyon was talking, patient and calm and her voice moving like a rainstorm. "My people, Billy's people, we're nomads. We don't have a kingdom, we don't have lands of our own. We're too big to really settle on a land and stay there without needing five times what small people need. We don't have a place to call home. We haven't had one since before we started keeping records so we'll always remember things. So we keep to what we do have, and what we have is the knowing of how to do things the right way. We have _tradition, _and the people who live with us keep to them. And that includes the outfit."

Finn pouted. "You sure?"

"Yep." She smiled again. "Sure." And suddenly she was standing up, and Finn rocked a bit from the brief vacuum of displaced air, and her blue hands were around him, and he was rising up in the air (a few stray ceremonial bits falling off him).

"And now," she said, calmer than ever. "You learn the dance."


	2. Recurrence

I seized on the notion of Finn reminding Canyon powerfully of Billy in younger and better days as an interesting notion for a Canyinn point and narrative; not to the point of her having Finn as a replacement Billy, of course! Hopefully it doesn't feel like that.

Disclaimer: I don't own Adventure Time and make no profit from this story.

* * *

Canyon knew wastelands. Those lands were a home to her, nothing between her and her destination but a matter of distance and a time to just let everything go.

She was a giant, a being of scale; everything about her was adapted to large proportions, and places. Maybe she was drawn to lands like these, where she could see for miles where the ground spread wide and stone arced up like knives driven into the ground by mighty heroes; wastelands were _big _places, and almost always with something to fight and test herself against, and every win an assurance to herself that she was a _totally awesome badass of bad_asses.

She already knew that, of course. But it was good to have reminders in those

A camp site, disorganized in a 'toss things wherever' sort of way, had a small fire by her standards. To the boy traveling with her, shorter than her knee and slimmer than her arm, it was a blaze bigger than a hut. Maybe that was why he was curled up in light blankets, nestled into the crook of her knee and thigh.

Canyon flexed her knee as much she dared. Finn mumbled something unhappily. She stopped moving, and he curled back in, restful again.

Canyon sighed, but a small sigh, not unhappy as much as mildly annoyed. '_Not that bad to have really comfy legs, apparently.'_

It wasn't something she'd honestly expected herself to have ever thought. Finn made a lot of unexpected thoughts happen.

A lot of unexpected feelings too, come to think of it.

Impulsively, she leaned down and softly patted the top of his head. She wondered how many people had really seen him without the hat, his hair unleashed and let go. Golden and bright, the color like the moon upon her brow, his hair felt startlingly soft against her skin. Finn mumbled contently, and her back prickled; suddenly she felt like she was doing something not quite correct, a forbidden thing, a _personal _thing-

He nuzzled against her, warm and curled up. His hair almost seemed to move, or maybe it was just her fingers twisting in surprise, and her hand was deep in his hair, like a furry ring around her knuckles.

Her other hand raised, lowered, stroked it and gently unwound it from her fist. She wondered how he got his hair so silky smooth, so appealing. So… tempting and inviting, even.

The edge of buckteeth braced against her lower lip. She tensed, feeling a sudden powerful sense of awkward uncertainly like a punch to the gut, bringing her low, making her feel _small. _And suddenly, she was a girl again, the least respected in the class of the world's oldest hero teaching it's youngest, and the teacher's hulking green body like an ancient colossus stitched together from lost worlds, and then Billy the looking down at her with a favoring smile and fluttering inside because she didn't know what to do or what to say-

As then, as now; a hand curling around her fingers. Billy's had been big, dwarfing her strong but slender wrist. Finn's fingers barely covered the blue edge of two knuckles, but the grasp was almost exactly the same, light for all t he impression of heroic strength, and yet a difference. Where Billy had been shy, Finn was bold. And yes, Billy had shown bravery in it; Finn was asleep and the gesture totally reflexive.

Canyon raised her other hand, free from Finn's hair, and did what she did back then; hold him back. It wasn't the same as with Billy; she's just held his hand. Here, she wound her fingers around Finn's small and stout body, squeezing gently. He giggled, he felt like the world's cutest teddy bear.

The past and the now bled together. Canyon closed her eyes, and felt a sense of things going full circle.


End file.
